Advice for graduating seniors: “Don’t be afraid to work hard to achieve your goal.”

Bringing Creativity to the Marketplace

Artistic endeavors have always been a part of Linda Louis’s life. The daughter of a fashion designer, she has shown and sold her paintings in several top New York City art galleries. She has performed arias by composers Verdi and Puccini on stage and also penned national award-winning limericks.

Creativity has always provided a solid foundation for The Louis Marketing Group, the successful marketing company she founded in 1982. Ms. Louis credits having worked on national accounts in the Public Relations Department of communications giant Young & Rubicam as “boot camp.”

“Y & R was a fabulous training ground for me and the place where the impetus for founding my own company took shape,” she says.

“Art and advertising were something I was interested in from the time I could hold a pencil. I would sit and draw for hours. I still have the many notebooks filled with drawings from my childhood. Starting my own advertising agency was a natural outgrowth of a dream that I was fortunate enough to bring to fruition.”

Ms. Louis’s firm provides marketing master plans, public relations, Web site design, and communications services for some of Long Island’s and the New York metropolitan area’s most prominent companies and non-profit organizations. Her clients have included leading commercial real estate firms and organizations, major banks and financial institutions, Co-Op City, Girl Scouts of America, Suffolk County, and a number of well-known area hotels.

When queried about her basic business philosophy, Ms. Louis says that when The Louis Marketing Group evaluates a new assignment, it is advantageous to work with a client whose business philosophy she can support.

She is an active member of several regional associations committed to Long Island’s economic growth. She serves on the advisory board of the Adelphi University School of Business, is an officer of Advancement for Commerce, Industry & Technology (ACIT), and a director of Women Economic Developers of Long Island (WEDLI), a founding member and long time Director of the Long Island Chapter of the International Facility Management Association, a founding member and former board member of the Action Committee for the Environment (ACE), a subsidiary of Sustainable Long Island.

An advocate for small business, Ms. Louis has taught entrepreneurship at Hofstra University, and given countless presentations and seminars on the subjects of networking, marketing, the Internet and Web Sites for such hosts as SUNY Stony Brook, SUNY Farmingdale, SCORE, ACIT, Citibank and the Long Island Association. She has written numerous published articles on the subjects of public relations, publicity, Web Sites and direct mail.

Ms. Louis has been interviewed numerous times on television and radio as an expert on various aspects of internet promotion, marketing and public relations. She has been honored as Small Business Advocate of the Year by ACIT; saluted by the LIA for her work on behalf of the Small Business Council; and received numerous awards, among them a citation from Suffolk County for the writing, directing and production of the video classic, “Pizza For Breakfast,” which promotes proper nutrition among school children.

Ms. Louis lives in Dix Hills, New York with her life partner, David. Her two sons have continued the family’s entrepreneurial tradition as owners of their own successful businesses in the national entertainment promotion and music industries.